Cost of Developing a New Drug
Increases to About $1.7 Billion

By

Peter Landers Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Updated Dec. 8, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

The amount of money that drug companies must spend to bring a single drug to market has risen to about $1.7 billion because of a higher percentage of failures during trials, according to a study by the consulting firm Bain & Co.

Many companies are living on borrowed time until their blockbuster patents run out, says the Bain study. It warns that big pharmaceutical companies may face the same fate as the steel industry in the 1970s...